Mission Statement
"Through events out of the Assyrians’ control, our numbers have decreased dramatically and as a result, our identity and physical presence in our ancestral homeland is forcibly being removed. A key catalyst to the reduction of our numbers is the absence of a land to call home. Ultimately, we need land within which to reside so we are able to rebuild our nation and live free of persecution. We aim to preserve the Assyrian identity through the formation of an independent Assyrian country.
This is a campaign working for Assyria. We are Assyrians, a unique nation separate from the rest of the world. We are not Iraqi, Syrian, Iranian or any other Middle Eastern nation. Assyrians are the indigenous people of occupied Assyria, a land that is known today as Iraq, and we seek to reclaim our rights to the land through the declaration of the United Nations for indigenous people.
We endeavor to be recognised by the United Nations as an Assyrian nation, and for the United Nations to acknowledge that Assyria is being illegally occupied by surrounding nations including Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.
We aim to unite all Assyrians under one Assyrian name with the freedom of religion. Our goals have no correlation with religion. This is a campaign to preserve an ancient nation that is fighting to defy extinction, a nation that continues to practice its ancestral traditions, maintain its culture and retain its national identity despite the current state of Diaspora."
How did we lose Assyria?
"The Assyrians’ misfortune began in 627 BC when the death of Ashurbanipal sparked civil war within the Assyrian homeland. This was due to numerous claimants to the throne. Nabopolassar of Babylon revolted against Assyria while it was weakened by internal strife and ineffectual rule. He seized the city of Babylon and was proclaimed king of the city. Forming an alliance with the Medes, they successfully sacked Assyria in 612 BC after an unrelenting siege. Thus the Assyrian empire fell. An Assyrian-Egyptian alliance was formed in 608 BC but was defeated by the Babylonians and Medes, after which Assyria ceased to exist as an independent nation.
Over the next two thousand years, the Assyrian people sustained unfathomable hardships. They continued to exist as a unique cultural entity, still inhabiting the Fertile Crescent. During WWI. The Ottoman Empire’s ethnic cleansing resulted in the massacre of 750,000 Assyrians (1915-1918). Because Hakkari was in Ottoman territory and contained a high population of Assyrians, they were driven out of Hakkari and into Nineveh (Mosul Vilayet – Ottoman Empire Village Council). Nineveh was then given to Iraq in 1924. The League of Nations Authorised the Mosul Vilayet to be surrendered to the British and that Hakkari was to remain in Ottoman territory. The Assyrian homeland was thus split in two.
In 1927, copious amounts of oil were found in the Assyrian homeland. Prospectors from around the world would come to invest in this new discovery. Great Britain determined that the oil rich Bet-Nahrain was too precious to be given to the Assyrians and sought to silence political activists. The British were then to give control of Iraq to the Arabs, not the Indigenous minority. Iraq was given independence in 1932. This was followed by the SImele Massacre in 1933 committed by the armed forces of Iraq, while the Assyrians were still emerging from one of the darkest periods of their history. It was a systematic targeting of the Assyrians, leading to the destruction of 63 villages and deaths of 3000 Assyrians.
Severe mistreatment, broken promises and a complete lack of political and moral obligation to fulfil clauses established in several treaties made in the early 20th Century has led to two unrecognized genocides and a continuing struggle of survival for the Assyrian people in Iraq. Furthermore, the events which took place since the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003 have resulted in the destruction of Assyrian cultural heritage, the looting of the Baghdad Museum where thousands of Assyrian artifacts were destroyed and stolen, and a slow genocide, which continues today and has caused a mass exodus of Assyrian people to neighbouring countries where further atrocities are being committed against Assyrian refugees. Indigenous and cultural heritage laws, policies and declarations are not enforced and as such, the Assyrian people have been made to suffer the consequences. Down to less than half their population in their native homeland, Assyrians all over the world are seeking justice and the right to live free of persecution, in a place they can call their homeland."
